Welcome To My World

Program puts LO kids ‘in shoes’ of those with disabilities

By Cliff Newell

The Lake Oswego Review, Oct 29, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Cliff Newell / Lake Oswego Review

Students put on blindfolds to simulate vision impairment during the recent Welcome To My World workshop, led by Connie Johnson, at Oak Creek Elementary School. The program is part of the curriculum for all LOSD third and fourth grade students.

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“I felt I couldn’t fix my daughter’s disability. But I could fix other’s attitudes toward to her disability.”

That statement by Rosemary Carlsen pretty well sums up what Welcome To My World Disability Awareness Program is all about.

It has now been going on in the Lake Oswego School District for 15 years, and it is required of all students in the third or fourth grades.

“Something humble,” is what its founder, Dorothy Coughlin of the Archdiocese of Portland, called it.

But it has been something wonderful for children with disabilities and their parents in Lake Oswego. Thanks to Welcome To My World, empathy becomes much easier for students without disabilities.

“It is a wonderful way to help others who are ‘differently-abled,’ “ said Connie Johnson, psychologist and counselor for the LOSD, who has been part of WTMW from the beginning.

“It’s also a good way to help children understand the similarities. They find out how students with challenges compensate for and overcome disabilities.”

“I wish every child could take Welcome To My World,” said Lake Oswego’s Karen Ettinger, founder and director Multicultural Resource Center at Portland State University. “It puts you in another person’s shoes.”

Ettinger added, “If you want to see progress in action, see Welcome To My World in the Lake Oswego School District. They’ve taken the ball and run with it.”

Pamela Montoya is chair of the Special Services Parent Advisory Committee and is the mother of two autistic sons, and she has been active in Welcome To My World for the past six years.

“I wanted to be part of a group that understood my sons’ experience on a day-to-day basis,” Montoya said.

Perhaps the best way to understand what Welcome To My World is all about is to attend one of Johnson’s training seminars. She recently held one at Oak Creek Elementary School for third and fourth graders. The pace was fast as the kids advanced through eight stations, but Johnson had plenty of help. Twenty-five parents signed up to volunteer.

There was another volunteer, too — 17-year-old Marie Blanchard, a junior at Lake Oswego High School, who has cerebral palsy. Her mind is excellent. Marie loves art and is very good at math. But her condition hinders her ability to communicate. Her role at the seminar was to demonstrate how she uses her “augmentative communication device,” which lets her type in what she wants to say, then use a synthesized voice to read her words.

“Marie has been coming to Oak Creek two or three times a week to serve as a cadet teacher,” Johnson said.

Speech challenges is just one area that students learn about. Other stations at the training day cover hearing, vision, lower limb, upper limb, fine motor skills, learning disabilities, and mental retardation.

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